Tag: federal legislation
The Supreme Court’s Supreme Betrayal
The Supreme Court of the United States did a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation in Trump v. Anderson.
In a stunning disfigurement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court impressed upon it an ahistorical misinterpretation that defies both its plain text and its original meaning. Despite disagreement within the Court that led to a 5–4 split among the justices over momentous but tangential issues that it had no need to reach in order to resolve the
Special Ed Shouldn’t Be Separate
In the fall of 2020, as my son and his neighborhood friends started to trickle back out into the world, my daughter, Izzy, stayed home. At the time, Izzy was 3 years old, ripe for the natural learning that comes from being with other kids. I knew by the way she hummed and flapped her hands around children at the playground—and by her frustration with me at home—that she yearned to be among them.
The question of where Izzy would
Abortion Pills Will Be the Next Battle in the 2024 Election
The next front is rapidly emerging in the struggle between supporters and opponents of legal abortion, and that escalating conflict is increasing the chances that the issue will shape the 2024 election as it did last November’s midterm contest.
President Joe Biden triggered the new confrontation with a flurry of recent moves to expand access to the drugs used in medication abortions, which now account for more than half of all abortions performed in the United States. Medication abortion involves
Moore v. Harper Can Help Republicans Rewrite Election Law
Every American child in public school learns that the U.S. political system is one of checks and balances, in which the judicial, executive, and legislative branches constrain one another to ensure that no one branch of government exercises too much power. One pending case before the Supreme Court asks: What if they didn’t?
In Moore v. Harper, North Carolina Republicans are arguing that no other state body, including the state supreme court, has the power to restrict the legislature’s
The Domino Effects of New Anti-Abortion Laws
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Should Americans have a right to privacy and/or bodily autonomy? If so, what should those rights encompass and exclude? Abortion? Carrying a pistol? Selling a kidney? Taking heroin? Keeping a Swiss bank account? Assembling explosive devices
Can Anything Stop Republicans From Rolling Back Rights?
The great divergence is rapidly expanding—and President Joe Biden’s window to reverse it is narrowing.
Since the 1960s, Congress and federal courts have acted mostly to strengthen the floor of basic civil rights available to citizens in all 50 states, a pattern visible on issues from the dismantling of Jim Crow racial segregation to the right to abortion to the authorization of same-sex marriage. But now, offensives by red-state governments and GOP-appointed federal judges are poised to retrench those
Can Joe Biden Work With Republicans?
With rare exceptions, Joe Biden throughout his presidency has stressed his determination to cooperate with the GOP whenever possible and has minimized his personal confrontations with Republican leaders on both the national and state levels. That strategy has yielded the tangible benefit of the big bipartisan infrastructure bill now marching toward Senate approval, likely in the next few days. It has also allowed him to build strong working relationships with several Republican governors over combating the coronavirus pandemic and
Why Won’t Biden End the Filibuster?
For all the passionate words President Joe Biden delivered in defense of voting rights in his speech yesterday, it was the one word he never mentioned that provoked the strongest response from civil-rights advocates: filibuster.
Nowhere in his remarks did Biden utter what may go down as the political word of the year. The Senate procedure known as the filibuster now stands as the insuperable obstacle to the new federal voting-rights legislation that represents Democrats’ best chance to counter